Honesty is Not the Best Policy
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: In a time of grave crisis, humanity places its hopes on the political and military success of the young Prince of Altea.  There's one problem, though- the prince isn't what he appears to be.  FE11/12 with a twist: genderbent!Marth.
1. Chapter 1

**Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for mature themes and violence.

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

Linde's tattered trousers flapped around her ankles as she and her escort crept along the outskirts of Knorda. She'd dared to take her father's tome out of its hiding place, and the gilt on its binding shone whenever the sun broke through the high scrubby clouds. She had to hold the Aura tome carefully, so the reflected light didn't bring any attention their way, but she was afraid to hide it completely, in case they were suddenly attacked...

"So you've been masquerading as a boy since the fall of Pales?"

"Yes, sir."

"However did you manage it?" The Altean prince kept his eyes on the road ahead while he questioned her, but Linde could hear the curiosity in his voice.

"I had to," she said. Self-preservation was a good incentive to hide herself in the ragged clothes of a peasant youth. If she didn't survive, she couldn't have her vengeance on the man who'd taken her father...

"I understand that well enough," said Prince Marth, "but _how_ did you get by undetected? You didn't even cut your hair."

As she clumped along in the borrowed boots that pained her feet, Linde explained as to how she'd managed to keep the slavers from noticing she was the most desirable commodity they knew- an untouched young woman. She'd watched the other boys and adopted their mannerisms and speech, she'd stayed with the smaller and younger boys to make herself appear more imposing, she'd claimed the head covering that concealed her hair was custom of her people.

"It helped that my captors weren't terribly bright," she concluded.

"I suppose it would," replied the prince. He looked sharply at her, and his long-lashed blue eyes seemed for a moment to hold another question. Whatever it was, he kept it to himself and changed the subject entirely. "We'll have you back with Princess Nyna soon."

"Yes, sir!"

As Linde followed Prince Marth and his guards to the main body of Nyna's army, something in the way the Altean moved struck her as... odd. A deeply strange thought formed in her head, but Linde pushed it away. This was no time to be silly.

-x-

"She's not even fifteen, Merric."

Merric wasn't entirely sorry that his lord wanted to discuss the Archanean mage-girl they'd found in Knorda's infamous market that afternoon.

"I want you to keep an eye on her," Prince Marth continued, in the same earnest tone.

"With pleasure. I'd like very much to have the chance to chat with the last pupil of the great Pontifex Miloah."

"It may be a sore topic with her, Merric. Given his demise..."

"Understood, sire."

And the conversation ended... yet didn't. The prince sat with closed eyes for a few moments, clearly mulling something over, while Merric watched the flickering shadows of lamp-light on the canvas walls of the pavilion. Light magic. A genuine student of light magic. What a unique opportunity-

"Merric?" The prince's voice was oddly soft. "Do you believe she'd make a convincing boy? Linde, I mean."

"Not the way she came into camp, sire. Not a chance, with all that chestnut hair streaming down around her."

"Well, she did have it tied up before." Marth frowned, and the softness, the hesitancy, crept back into his voice as he continued. "I didn't notice, Merric. I didn't realize what she was until we were speaking face-to-face, and even then it took a moment. Don't you think I ought to have... realized?"

The prince was looking at Merric directly now with eyes that seemed very large, very bright. Merric felt a sudden tension in the air of the pavilion, not unlike the feeling of the winds as they changed.

"I can't say for certain, sire, not having seen her." It was a dodge, a diplomat's answer, unworthy of their friendship.

Marth reached out then and clasped Merric by the arm. Merric looked down at the fingers that stood out against the azure fabric of his robes, tapering fingers with almond-shaped nails.

"Look after her, Merric. For me."

"Yes, sire."

He seemed to feel the imprint of Marth's fingers long after the prince had let him go.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong>: This is the result of a "genderbent Marth" prompt over on the FE kink meme on Livejournal. Something like this is probably NOT what the prompter expected, but I can't do any sort of story without overthinking and overplotting it, so instead of a cute little story featuring girl!Marth and Merric kissing in the hallway, you all get this sprawling thing.

So, yes. War of Darkness + War of Heroes featuring genderbent!Marth. Will include Merric/Marth and Marth/Caeda, possibly with some involvement from Xane along the line. Just so everyone knows what they're getting into.

Inspiration from the title comes from a piece of artwork on Deviant Art entitled "Honesty" that was the first non-comic treatment of genderbent!Marth that I'd ever seen. And from the NGE reboots. I'm weird that way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy**

I do not own _Fire __Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for mature themes and violence.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

In one alcove of the vast palace of Millennium Court stood a statue of two young women playing some sort of game with a ribbon. The girls sported elaborate carved hairstyles but, save for the ribbon, were entirely nude. Merric took a moment to admire the fair curves of marble; if there were any statues like these in the royal court of Altea, they'd been discreetly hidden from public view. He'd gone the first twelve years of his life without proper appreciation of the bared female breast, and it had taken a mainland education to shock him out of that mindset.

The new Merric, duly educated, could therefore appreciate the sight of the young woman who stood against that attractive piece of statuary. Linde had foregone the rags of a peasant lad in favor of the clothes of a highborn Archanean maiden, a sheath of rosy silk that exposed her arms and a good deal else.

It was to ward off the heat, of course, Merric thought, and he smiled to himself as a drop of perspiration worked its way down his temple. The air in the palace was oppressive, sweltering; Merric's own clothes that day were white robes suited to the desert summer, robes he hadn't expected to need in the Holy Kingdom's capital. Claims of the healthful mountain climate of Pales turned out to be false; if the windows in his bedroom the night before hadn't already been broken, Merric would've likely blown them out just to let in some air.

"Hello, Merric."

"Good day, Linde. I was wondering if we might continue our conversation from yesterday."

"Sure." The gleam of interest in her eyes was immediate and not well-hidden.

"Your father- and pardon me if the subject distresses you?"

"No." Her upswept tail of hair bounced as Linde shook her head.

"So many of the celebrated adepts of light magic were women- Saint Fila, Saint Helarn- that it surprises me that your father had such skill with the Aura tome."

"It was the occasion of a lot of... trouble... at the school in Khadein," Linde said, and Merric heard a flatness to her voice. Fearing she would clam up on him, he continued in haste.

"Yes, of course. But your father did become Aura's master... and then passed it to you? I'm afraid I don't understand how the inheritance worked in this case." Inherited tomes were, to Merric's knowledge, one of those things that had been practiced long, long in the past... and then stopped because of the trouble it caused.

"When my father mastered Aura," Linde said, sounding a bit like a lecturer, "its power was bound to him. It's bound to me now, not because of my... bloodline... but because my father taught me how to access the spell."

"So you inherited the tome not as your birthright, but as your father's chosen successor." Merric wanted to be as clear as possible on this point. "That's the same way I acquired Excalibur- Master Wendell granted it to me."

"That's how it's usually done," Linde said, sounding unconcerned. "Now, there _are_ some weapons that are inherited as a birthright. The most famous one of them comes from your own country."

"You speak of the divine blade known as Falchion? I wasn't aware that the details of its legend had spread so far."

"I had to learn about the War of Altean Succession along with everything else," Linde replied, and her smile flared brightly for a moment. "The twin brothers of the great hero King Anri were feuding over which of them was the king's rightful heir, and the only way to tell who was lying was to give them each the blade and let them try to use it."

"And the blade reacted to the touch of the true heir, the eldest male in the bloodline, and none other," said Merric to complete the tale.

"That part always confused me when I was little," Linde said. "We have the three holy weapons here in Archanea, the regalia, but the king can bestow those weapons on those he finds worthy. But in Altea, it works the opposite way... Falchion knows its owner, and acknowledges none other. That was the contract placed upon it by the gods... so Father always said."

Merric felt his spirits deflate significantly as they talked, which did not escape Linde's notice.

"It's never been recovered, has it? Falchion, I mean. It's been missing since the great battle in Menedy..."

"Yes. We don't have it," said Merric. In that moment, he wasn't sure if that was a bad thing for their cause, or not.

-x-

Merric extricated himself from conversation with Linde, who truly did seem eager to discuss the minutiae of teaching practices at the Khadein academy, and hastened back to his lord with the information he'd gleaned out of the current mistress of the Aura tome.

Prince Marth was pacing around one of the audience rooms, an ornate chamber wherein the late king of Archanea had received honored guests in some degree of privacy. On a day in which the junior knights had stripped down to their shirts and loose breeches to cope with the inland climate, Altea's prince was conspicuous for the amount of his clothing, including a high-collared tunic and full, heavy trousers tucked into his boots. Prince Marth had the sleeves of his shirt rolled up in an apparent concession to the heat, then negated that by wearing gloves that reached to his elbows.

"Are you quite comfortable in all that, sire?"

"Yes," said Marth, his eyes meeting Merric's in a direct challenge. Merric decided to get to the point as quickly as he could, summing up the essence of his conversation with Linde.

"As we thought, the royal sword of Altea is also bound by a contract, not unlike the contracts placed upon the more powerful tomes," he concluded. "Linde knew of it- only the eldest male of the bloodline of Anri can make use of the powers of Falchion."

Marth, who had resumed his pacing during Merric's report, now stood some distance from Merric with his back turned. As Merric watched, Marth slowly put up one hand to brush away some untidy strands of hair from the nape of his neck. It was a characteristic gesture, seemingly with little or no thought put into it, and though Merric had seen the prince flick at his hair _like __that_ dozens upon dozens of times, he wished at the moment that Marth wouldn't move exactly _like __that_. It was eye-catching, in a way it shouldn't have been.

"I don't understand, Merric," the prince said after a leaden pause.

"Sire?" Merric hoped he didn't have to go through the whole magical-contract business from the beginning. It wasn't _that_ arcane.

"I realize the task before me is a difficult one," said Marth as he turned to face Merric again, "but why would my father set me on a path he knew to be _impossible_?"

"I- I can't say, sire."

And then the prince went _like __that_ again with his hair, and completely useless words lodged in Merric's throat and remained there, unspoken.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s ****Notes**: Fila and Helarn, ancient heroines of Light magic, are purely my headcanon, though the name of Helarn comes from the Helarn staff, an unused weapon for FE1. It made weapons unbreakable. The idea of Anri's brothers being twins is also my headcanon, though the magical contracts on Falchion and the other weapons are not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy**

I do not own _Fire__Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for mature themes and violence.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

In the court of Archanea, it was considered an honor to dress, bathe, and attend to the bodily needs of the sovereign. It made sense to native Archaneans that no less than the second son of a high-born marquess should assist a king, a prince, in rising from bed in the morning. The visiting princes of lesser royal houses were, apparently, of a less civilized nature; they declined the servants Princess Nyna offered them. Duke Hardin of Aurelis claimed he needed no attendants other than his own chosen men, and the Prince of Altea indicated that whatever he needed for the day should be left in his dressing room before dawn, but under no circumstances was anyone to enter his bedchamber.

The spurned scions of Archanean nobility, so eager to prove their usefulness after the liberation of their capital, bantered among themselves over whether the prince's odd habits were the product of Altean modesty or some more recent paranoia. Waking in the middle of the night to find the garrison defending your home had actually _seized_ said home for themselves might just do that to a person.

-x-

"Beg pardon, my lord. The princess said to rouse you by eight..."

The Viscount of Gortys had the fair hair and light eyes common to the people of the Holy Kingdom, and his long face showed considerable embarrassment that, once again, he'd failed in his duty to properly attend the commander of Princess Nyna's armies. Said esteemed visitor was seated at the dressing table, already in his under-shirt and drawers, when the Viscount arrived.

"Don't trouble yourself over it. As I said yesterday, sleeping past daybreak at all is a pleasure I don't often enjoy."

It was quite a kind answer that Prince Marth gave to the Viscount; a less considerate guest would have pointed out that the bedchamber was stifling and the four-poster bed with its plumes and tassels was, under these circumstances, a place to roast to death rather than sleep. But if Prince Marth _had_ pointed these things out, the Viscount and everyone beneath him in the court hierarchy would have been obliged to do something about it- call in a mage to fill the room with a snowstorm, set falls of cooling water pouring down the walls, or something equally drastic. So the Viscount accepted the answer, feeling decidedly grateful to the visiting prince who didn't expect miracles out of anyone.

So grateful, in fact, that the Viscount of Gortys didn't question much thereafter.

-x-

Gortys was, in Prince Marth's estimation, something of an amiable idiot. His father the Marquess of Teuthis was a weathercock, a man who'd changed his loyalties half-a-dozen times since the outbreak of war- not for any apparent self-interest, but because he wasn't capable to sticking to a course of action once he'd set upon it. But Teuthis had been happy to welcome Princess Nyna and her armies when they arrived, and Nyna had welcomed the young Viscount to court, and now he was Prince Marth's problem for the duration of her stay at Millennium Court.

And, truth be told, an amiable idiot rummaging through her personal effects wasn't such a bad thing. If Nyna had assigned her a clever and ambitious young noble as a servant, Marth would have sent him packing at once.

"Is that comfortable, my lord?"

"Yes," Marth lied as Gortys tied off the sash looped around her waist. The sash was tight enough that the fabric of her tunic was bunched awkwardly in front, but that wasn't the main source of her discomfort at the moment, and Marth wasn't about to ask Gortys to help her with the actual problem.

The man wasn't exceptionally bright, but he wasn't blind.

Hopefully, the fact that her sash was too tight would keep her from thinking too much about the red prickling irritation under her bindings, at least until she could see Sister Lena for a remedy. The summer's heat had brought with it all manner of nuisances...

"Will you be wearing the Princess Nyna's Emblem today, my lord?"

Of course she would wear the Fire Emblem. Displaying it for all to see wasn't any mere affectation of fashion; it was a declaration of purpose. More than that... it was proof, solid evidence beneath her fingers that the Prince of Altea was the champion they'd been waiting for.

And when Gortys was finished with her, it was the Prince of Altea looking back at her in the mirror- Fire Emblem, bunched-up tunic, and all.

-x-

Nyna had invited her to breakfast. An intimate breakfast, Nyna had said, with only a dozen or so people. The people turned out to be ladies from noble houses that had remained loyal to the House of Archanea through the invasion and occupation, and now they wanted a chance to gawk at their liberator. "Part of the territory," the people of Talys called such duties, and though Marth felt there were more useful things she might be doing that particular morning, if the noble ladies thought breakfast with the Prince of Altea was a fit reward for their efforts... it was a reward given easily enough.

Marth didn't often find herself in the company of so many women; she looked around the table at the assembly of rouged faces, the heads of tightly-curled hair and all the rounded bosoms as displayed by the finest Archanean fashions, and felt completely apart from it all. The conversation was nothing significant- a little clucking from the senior ladies over _how __young_ their princess and the Altean prince both were, but mostly the chatter of people who were deeply, immeasurably relieved to have something resembling their normal world again. It was why Nyna's army had to linger at court, after all; there remained half a continent to win, but the part they'd already won couldn't simply be let to itself. The dead must be properly mourned and laid to rest, the desecrated temples must be sanctified, the loyal rewarded and the fickle and the treacherous dealt with accordingly. In that light, this celebratory breakfast had its own minor role in welcoming order back to the city of Pales.

A young girl two places down, the daughter of the late Count of Mantinei, seemed rather dazzled by the presence of the Altean prince, and kept raising her napkin to her lips as she cast long glances in Marth's direction. Marth spoke to her once- just a passing reference to the lands of House Mantinei, which had suffered considerable damage- and the girl's gray eyes widened to the extent that they looked likely to pop right out. This nettled Marth, and she turned away to speak to an aging viscountess with a keen and surprising interest in the isle of Talys. She was Grustian by birth, and remembered when a young nobleman of Talys had passed through the royal court of Grust, impressing them all with his wits and gift for language.

"Yes, King Mostyn was quite well at our parting. The western coast and the capital were both ravaged by the pirate attacks, and one inland village completely razed, but the people of Talys are stouthearted. I'm certain that, by now, they've built the village anew."

"And his young daughter? I'm told she is here, fighting in your company."

"Yes, the princess Caeda is with us." This was _not_ a comfortable subject, and Marth was relieved when Nyna stepped in to explain that the heiress of Talys had taken a fall from her pegasus during the battle for the capital and was, a fortnight after the victory, still resting.

Marth lost her taste for both breakfast and conversation after that; she decided the fresco on the opposite wall was more interesting than the pop-eyed girl and the viscountess and the rest. The painting had come through the occupation intact, and depicted a merchant showing off a tray of goods to a roomful of well-dressed young ladies- possibly the ancestors of those now at the table. One of the girls was reaching for an ornate dagger in the center of the tray.

The pop-eyed girl never did stop staring. Nyna proclaimed the breakfast a success, though she had noticed the attention Marth had paid to the fresco. She knew the story behind it, as it happened.

"Long ago, when the Holy Kingdom was young and wars raged against the city of Thabes, a widowed queen of Archanea hid her young son among the women of the court to keep him far from the battle. But the late king's adviser, a clever man, disguised himself as a peddler and went to the prince's hiding place with his goods. All the maids-of-honor crowded around, reaching for brooches and hair-pins and ribbons, but one of the girls showed interest in a dagger the cunning adviser had placed on the tray. And so the prince gave himself away, and the adviser exhorted him to step up to his duties and fight, as his father had fought, and so the prince joined the battle and Thabes was crushed."

"Ah. An inspiring tale, to be certain."

A deeply silly tale, in Marth's opinion, though she couldn't pin down why exactly it disgusted her. After leaving Nyna, she walked back to her rooms alone, nagged by the feeling that she really ought to pay Caeda a visit. There was no reason to avoid her friend, after all... but Marth had been doing exactly that.

She was dwelling on a memory from a few years back, of Caeda dashing through the practice yard, methodically dissecting a practice dummy with her sword, when Marth sensed someone lurking in an alcove of the palace corridor. Two someones- the pop-eyed daughter of House Mantinei and another young lady from the luncheon. Their voices carried well across the marble-floored hall.

"He's just so... it's like, when I look at him, there's no one else in the room."

The pop-eyed girl had a high feathery voice. The voice that answered her was lower, flatter, with a distinct twang to the words.

"Yeah, I'd heard the Altean prince was a real charmer, but I didn't know they what they meant 'til now. I mean, even watching him pick up a fork was interesting. They don't have anybody like that around here."

"I think he's the nicest boy I've ever seen," sighed the pop-eyed girl with whom Marth had exchanged one inconsequential sentence.

Marth took the long way back to her rooms to avoid encountering either of the young ladies. It was one thing, she reflected, to charm a girl by, say, bursting into a prison cell with a party of rescuers in tow. It was another thing entirely to have that effect by showing up to breakfast and answering a few questions. A very useful thing to be sure, but...

If only living up to the role of Altea's prince could truly be that simple! As simple as reaching for a dagger instead of a hairpin when presented with the choice.

Not long after, she dreamed of a peddler with a hidden face, presenting her Falchion on a tray. When Marth grasped the blade by its hilt, it shrank, and became nothing more than a gilt hairpin studded with emeralds and rubies. They laughed at her then, the other girls, and the pop-eyed girl screamed from behind her handkerchief. Marth could still hear the shrieks and the laughter when she broke free of the dream and found herself face-down in the grand four-poster bed, her unbound breasts pressed uncomfortably beneath her in a reminder of what she was and what could never be.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s ****Notes**: Just to be clear, only a tiny handful of people know that Marth isn't a boy. Merric knows, though he didn't originally, and Lena found out shortly after joining Marth's company. Jagen and Malledus have known the whole time, and the King of Talys knows even though he's not in this story. The knights don't, the other royals don't, and the rank-and-file most certainly do not. And yes, Marth does identify herself as a girl who happens to also be a prince. Or a girl who has to become a prince, perhaps.

The story in the fresco is based upon a fragment of the Trojan War myths, in which young Achilles is hidden from war-recruiters until cunning Odysseus shows up in the guise of a peddler. Funny... Gharnef likes to pull that particular disguise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy**

I do not own _Fire__Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for mature themes and violence.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three<strong>

Whenever Marth heard the name of Menedy spoken, she imagined not the fortress itself, or the surrounding lands, or the noble house that governed them, but the river into which her father's body had been tossed without prayer or ceremony after his murder. The land and its people were to her without substance, mere dots and squiggles upon her collection of maps; likewise, the fort on western horizon and its battery of ballistae had less power over her imagination than did the blood-clouded waters of Menedy River.

With all this occupying space in her head, Marth paid scant attention to the briefing that followed the third day of the Archanean League's siege of Fort Menedy. She didn't particularly want to hear how long it _might_ take to starve the defenders into surrendering without conditions; the way to deal with the so-called "wooden cavalry" was to charge in and strike them where they sat, preferably with fire and thunder. This plan, such as it was, made some of the more conservative heads around the table nervous. In particular, the Archanean bishop with the thick gray mustache seemed on edge at the idea of a direct assault on the fortifications.

Reckless, Bishop Boah called it, and Marth- still stung by the way Nyna had used the words "a hunger for danger" to describe the same plans- sat back in her chair and decided to submerge herself again in her own thoughts. It seemed to her that most of her day had been spent taking heat from one corner or another, with the worst of it coming from Nyna's people.

"_Should __I __learn __you __have __been __false __to __her, __or __are __manipulating __her_, _heads __will __roll_."

Marth wasn't going to forget that encounter with the flower of Archanean knighthood any time soon, and not simply because Sir Astram had been, in his own words, _discourteous_. Lack of courtesy wasn't going to hinder their cause on the field, not if Astram followed orders as promised. No, it was the specific phrasing of his accusation and his threat.

_If you have been false to Nyna._

Marth touched the surface of the Fire Emblem; she hadn't consciously meant to, and didn't know she was reaching for it until she felt the engraved metal beneath her fingers. She then forced herself to fold her hands gracefully upon her knee, to sit up straight in her chair and listen to the remainder of the briefing. After all, the Prince of Altea asked to be judged based on upon deeds and not merely... reputation.

As Nyna was not present for the briefing, Marth had the prerogative to dismiss the bishops and generals once the issue of a fortress siege had finally been talked to death. She asked Duke Hardin to stay for a few moments; Marth thought she'd noticed a certain impatience in Hardin's voice whenever besieging Fort Menedy was discussed.

"Coyote, please tell me if I'm leading us wrong. I just can't see any advantage in starving out an enemy that has the freedom to attack us at a distance."

"No, Marth," said Hardin, and Marth felt some of her tension ease upon hearing his deep and resonant voice. "A barrage of strikes from the two ballisticians in our ranks, followed by successive flank attacks from our most mobile units- it will carry the day, I'm certain."

The plan had some of the flair and daring that characterized Hardin's own guerilla strikes back in Aurelis, so it didn't surprise Marth that the scheme appealed to Hardin, but she couldn't always be sure...

"That's good. Thank you for your honesty, Coyote." She felt warm metal beneath her fingers again, and looked down to see that she was, once more, touching the Fire Emblem.

Hardin had noticed this tic also.

"Marth, is something..."

Even as Hardin's unfinished question trailed into silence, Marth looked up at him and gave him the best answer she could supply.

"It's warm. The Fire Emblem, I mean. No matter the weather, or the hour, it's never really cool to the touch. It's as though something heats it from within."

She was not lying. The Prince of Altea, accusations from common-born knights notwithstanding, did not speak falsely.

Hardin's eyes, brown and keen like a falcon's, seemed to soften a little.

"It seems a great deal about this quest is yet beyond our understanding," he said.

Marth nodded. Something about the way he was now regarding her- the warmth, perhaps- made her throat close up.

-x-

Marth felt out-of-sorts all through supper that evening in camp. The music that Hardin's men played on their pipes and drums hit her nerves in all the wrong ways. She bit down on a piece of bone in her rabbit stew and was afraid for a moment that she'd chipped a tooth. And the sight of Dame Midia and Sir Astram sitting shoulder-to-shoulder just _bothered_ her. Just... bothered her.

The knights of the Holy Kingdom weren't as professional as they made themselves out to be, she thought as she poked through her bowl of stew. Yet she kept watching, long enough to see Astram pluck a piece of meat from his own bowl and place it at Midia's lips. Midia pecked at it with the manner of a hungry bird and Marth looked away in disgust.

She retired early that night, after giving permission for the others to enjoy themselves until curfew. There wasn't anything she particularly wanted to do at present, so Marth took out a knife and began to trim her nails. Three of them on the right hand had grown overlong, and the thumbnail on her left hand had broken during that morning's skirmish. She had just finished paring the torn edge when Merric asked if he might enter.

"Come in," she said, not looking up from the knife.

"Are you well, sire?" Merric asked once he'd hung up his hood for the evening. "You seemed a trifle... short... at supper."

"I assure you, Merric, I am and remain one and one-half inches above you."

Merric usually laughed at the prince's jokes, though the tame ones weren't especially funny and the funny ones often weren't especially _nice_. This time, though, he frowned, and as Marth glanced at him she noticed it was a thoughtful sort of frown that made Merric's eyes seem large and almost sad. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the candlelight.

"If something troubles your heart, sire, you know I am always willing to listen."

"Don't look that way, Merric." She turned her back on him to put away the knife. "I rely on you to keep my spirits up, so give us a smile and we'll call it a night."

She lay awake long after the candles were snuffed, long after the sound of Aurelian drums faded to nothing. Merric lay out of her reach; if Marth stretched her arm to its full extent, she could just catch the edge of his blanket with the tips of her fingers. She rolled over onto her side, shut her eyes, and hoped for some sleep before trumpets shattered the dawn.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s ****Notes**: Oh, to be sixteen again, to feel the first stirrings of passion... oh, wait, being sixteen is _terrible. _Glad to be well past it.

Looking over the _Shadow __Dragon_ script again, Marth sort of acts as his own tactician a fair amount of the time, usually in the Nyna chapters. A pity FE12 decided to gut that sort of self-reliance...


	5. Chapter 5

**Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy**

I do not own _Fire __Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Rated T for mature themes and violence.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four<strong>

The capture of Fort Menedy marked the total expulsion of the Dolhr-Grust alliance from Princess Nyna's kingdom. Three days of revelry followed, revelry aided by the large store of Grustian ale and spirits found on the premises. The enemy truly hadn't expected to lose, Merric decided, or they would've taken better care of something so valuable.

For the Alteans serving under Nyna's banner, though, it was a muted celebration, and once the casks were emptied and the celebrations ended, they turned to the more somber task of commemorating those lost in the massacre of Menedy River. Merric felt a little adrift during these ceremonies; he was a native-born Altean, to be sure, but for all his personal loyalty to the royal line of Anri, he felt his education in Khadein had marked him in the eyes of his countrymen. He was "that boy who went off to the desert to study magic," and both the journey and the course of study set him apart from the hard-riding Altean knights.

Merric had taken this distance to heart just enough that he looked on the memorial ceremonies with a measure of detachment. Academic detachment, perhaps. The Altean knights wept, or flushed with anger, when confronted with the place where King Cornelius was struck down by his allies. Merric just pondered the nature of the man.

A benevolent ruler, yes. A just king and a courageous one, a righteous man and a stubborn one. Phenomenally stubborn, truth be told. "Bull-headed" was the word Merric heard most often in Khadein when the news of the Altean defeat reached the Academy. Merric thought the criticism of his late king unfair- by all accounts, the battle went in the Alteans' favor until their Gra allies betrayed them- but now, looking at the king's legacy, he understood the harsh assessment a little better.

After all, hadn't he and everyone else just witnessed the moment in the mourning rites where Prince Marth poured out a offering of wine to sustain his father's soul in the world beyond? It was exactly right and exactly _wrong_. The eldest son poured the wine. The eldest daughter would offer a sweet loaf of unbroken bread. And a younger daughter... a younger daughter would stand by and watch. He'd glanced then at the faces of Prince Marth's tactician and knight captain both, to see how those men regarded an act that was, considered fairly, not _right_. Not blasphemy, maybe, not the same thing as reciting prayers backward or eating on a fast day, but not proper. Not in accordance with the law.

Neither Sir Malledus and Sir Jagen showed anything at all; their faces might have belonged to granite statues. And Merric felt a rather small person, lost in his own robes, because the truth that he shared with these two men was beginning to gnaw at his heart like a silverfish burrowed in the bindings of a tome.

-x-

In the delay that followed, Prince Marth and the usual bunch of gray and experienced heads, including Merric's teacher Master Wendell, attended briefing sessions, and Merric had comparative freedom to wander this fortress protecting the remote western stretches of the Holy Kingdom. He passed much of the time with Linde; she had focused so heavily upon light magic that elemental magic proved challenging to her, and Merric was able to help her make some progress when it came to the study of ice and thunder.

After their fourth practice, Linde could zap a bale of straw with conviction, and Merric left the yard feeling pleased with himself. On his way through the practice yards, Merric spotted his prince, then engaged in testing a strange-looking sword against the Princess of Talys and her pegasus. Merric recognized the weapon after a moment- a Levin sword, it was called, named after an ancient hero of song and story. The mythical Levin used wind magic just as Merric did, but the sword sent bolts of thunder magic at enemies, even through walls and other obstacles.

In Prince Marth's hands, it produced little sparks and fizzles, and Princess Caeda dodged them all without apparent effort. Merric sat down on a straw-bale to watch the show. Altea's girl-prince would have fooled anyone at that moment, Merric thought; Prince Marth's arms, bared to the late-summer heat, had developed to into something that a "frail" mage like Merric could only admire and envy. The prince would never- _ever_- resemble anything like the muscle-bound retainer that accompanied Princess Caeda everywhere, but she made quite the dashing figure at present.

No, _he._ Merric had to stop forgetting himself like that. Once they'd delved into this business of the contract on the Falchion, though, it became difficult to keep his pronouns straight in his own head.

Also, while Prince Marth's battle cry had a different timbre than Princess Caeda's, they were awfully close in pitch. Merric ought to mention that to his lord sometime.

The practice ended with Prince Marth demonstrating that _he_ couldn't do much of anything with the Levin sword. Merric waved to Princess Caeda as she and her winged steed went elsewhere, and then he hastily scooted off his straw-bale as Prince Marth approached.

"Well, that didn't turn out as I'd hoped."

"It requires a substantial amount of native magical ability to master a Levin sword, so I'm told," replied Merric.

"What's the point of it, then? Anyone who's good at magic goes into it and never touches a sword again." Prince Marth flicked at his bangs, which were dark and heavy from perspiration.

"It's an ancient form of swordfighting and things were different then. The Academy at Khadein isn't even a century old, you know. If I'd been born into another age, I'd probably have been forced into mounted combat or archery like a 'normal' Altean. Maybe I'd have developed... I don't know, a wind sword or something like that to make up for not being six-and-a-half feet tall with the arms of a monkey."

Marth laughed at him then. It was just a little bark of laugher from behind his hand, but again the sound of it was strangely... girlish. It didn't sound right. Merric wondered if everybody else noticed these things and brushed them aside, or it he was seeing and hearing things given solely to people with terrible secrets burrowing around in their hearts.

"Anyway," said Merric, to get those thoughts out of his head, "You're out-of-doors, so you must know where we're headed to next."

"Exactly where I want to go. Gra."

Merric stopped short and nearly tripped on the hem of his robe. With Archanea kingdom liberated, they could set sail and strike at anywhere- Altea, Grust, even Khadein. Gra was not really on the way to anything. More than that, it wasn't technically under Dolhr's oppressive thumb, or claw; King Jiol had decided to lay down with with dragons, but he was Gra's true-born ruler. Merric didn't have to sit in on the strategy briefings to know the difference between liberating a land under occupation and invading a sovereign nation.

"I know we have a great score to settle with them, sire, but is this really the time?"

"I will not face my people in Altea without having first avenged my father's murder."

The prince was in his element now- resolute, brimming with confidence, seemingly to immune to the doubts Merric noticed when the sun went down.

"But, sire..." Merric's tongue tripped on the word. "Doesn't Jiol have Falchion in his keeping?"

"Yes, Merric, I believe that he does."

Merric didn't ask if the decision to go right for the weapon that lay at the center of their dilemma were a wise one. He didn't suggest that they hold off on retrieving the sword until they'd freed Khadein and scoured its massive libraries for any information regarding "how to use weapons bound by magical contracts."

If the whole charade unraveled now, thought Merric, well, the timing could've been worse. Princess Nyna had her kingdom back, with a whole host of allies sworn to her cause and energized by victory. After all, their whole endeavor was supposed to be impossible; hadn't their enemies taunted them with the promise of bloody defeat every step of the way?

They'd come this far, and done this much, so maybe their cause wouldn't founder in Gra at all. Maybe, just maybe, Falchion would be so tired of being in Jiol's hands that it would respond to Prince Marth exactly as it ought to.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s ****Notes**: I don't know if calling the magic-sword thing in FE11 the "Levin" sword was _intended_ to be a nod to FE4/5 being in the distant past of the "Marth games," but it sure does work out for 'ficcing purposes!

So, regarding apparently stupid decisions made by empowered teenagers... well, actually, we'll get into more of that in the next chapter.


End file.
